Emotional Feeding - Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Blog: http://psychreviews.org/emotional-feeding/

Part of the divide between Theravada Buddhist attitudes, and later forms of Buddhism, is the insight of interrelatedness. To Thanissaro, interrelatedness, inter-being, or interdependence is not a happy realization, because of the mind's need for emotional feeding. He says, "all living beings depend on food. Interrelated is the process of eating. We eat each other. Physical, emotional and mental food." All human conflicts relate to feeding, especially on things that cannot be shared. There are good elements to interrelatedness as later traditions of Buddhism point out, but there is danger if the negative side is forgotten. He reminds us that even if we only feed on vegetables, there's a lot of suffering required to farm, process and transport food for consumption. By being hungry we are interdependent to the environment, which has so much that is out of our power.

Intro: 0:00
Feeding the Mind: 0:43
Skillful feeding: 1:51
The Manipulative Ego: 2:55
The Challenge: 4:13
Internal and External rewards: 6:06
Emotional Dysregulation: 7:12
The Mind has a Mind of its own: 9:37
Focus on your own work: 12:14
Unstable sources of food: 13:50
How to practice: 16:23
Savouring: 17:42
Skillful Thinking: 19:13
Appreciate where you are: 20:07
Blameless Feeding: 21:00
The Committee: 22:04
Facing Death: 23:52

Guided Meditation for Chronic Pain: https://rumble.com/v1goucj-meditation-and-chronic-pain-various-authors.html

Thanissaro's website: https://www.dhammatalks.org/

A New Year's Day Guided Meditation - Emotional Feeding: https://rumble.com/v1gvmab-new-years-day-guided-meditation.html

Pictures and video from Storyblocks, Pixabay, Wikipedia, and Me.

Guanjin By I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19813440

Someone still moves slowly in Japan by 2benny, CC BY 2.0, Ginza, Tokyo, Japan, https://flic.kr/p/ns1F9B

Buddhist Monk Ajaan Geoff giving a Dhamma Talk By Ajaan_Goeff_Dhamma_Talk.jpg: Sakula (Mary Reinard).The original uploader was Narcissus at English Wikipedia.derivative work: Sudozero (talk) – Ajaan_Goeff_Dhamma_Talk.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11290301